Randy Frisch issues a challenge to content marketers. A challenge that encourages marketers to focus less on SEO, lead gen, and shares, and more on entertaining your audience. If you create content, you need to read this.'A Challenge: Entertain With Your Content' — 8 minutes

Jessica Mehring has a nine step process to help with your content creation strategy. Coming up with content concept ideas is the easy part, but actually turning it into content can be a little more tricky 🤔'Content Creation Considerations' — 6 minutes

Ayaz Nanji uncovers some interesting stats about how companies are using their marketing automation systems. Stats cover how much companies are using their automation system, the goals they have, and what their biggest barriers to success are. 'How B2B Companies Are Using Marketing Automation' — 2 minutes

Meme of the week

As we're all now somewhat settled into 2017, it's time to say goodbye to what many believe is the worst year yet... 2016 👋

It was a year full of ups and downs, a crazy presidential race, and a shocking amount of celebrity deaths, but 2016 saved something special for it's grand finale... to completely embarrass Mariah Carey.

ICYMI: January 22, 2017

What we wrote

Marko Savic wrote a piece to help you bridge the gap between tactical marketing metrics and revenue metrics. Regardless of your companies marketing strategy, it's important to be measuring the impact Marketing has on revenue. This is a must-read. 'Using metrics to integrate Marketing and Sales' — 6 minute read

What we're reading

Nicholas Littlewants you to forget the old approach of throw it against the wall and see what sticks with large amounts of leads, and focus on a smaller, more targeted list 🎯 Your sales process will thank you. 3 Tips to Maximize the ROI of Your Lead Gen Activities — 6 minutes

Meme of the week

ICYMI: February 5, 2017

What we wrote

Marko Savic wrote a post about alternative facts in your funnel (don't worry, this isn't a post about politics.) This is a must read that will give you ideas about getting Sales and Marketing aligned using proven facts.

"Reality only has one set of facts.A Service Level Agreement (or SLA) binds Marketing and Sales to a shared reality."

9. Wesley Young looks at a recent study on what SMBs find most challenging about purchasing a marketing tech. He goes on to suggest sales tips to capitalize on those challenges, dealing with competition, and how to gain trust. SMBs are overwhelmed with digital marketing choices — 9 minutes

What we're reading

Lena Shaw explains the current state of Sales and Marketing stacks with companies invested in a number of siloed tools and platforms, and how in 2017 we should be looking to trim down with "best of breed" tools that should lead to better efficiency through the funnel. Making MarTech Consolidation Work for Your Business — 3 minutes

Ayaz Nanji points out the top three Sales challenges of 2017; too much time on non-sales activities, finding the right assets to assist in their sale, and spending time with prospects and clients. The Top Sales Challenges of 2017 — 2 minutes

Jim Brodo explains something that almost all of us have experienced: marketing fatigue. You know, like when you download some content and in return your inbox and voicemail gets filled up. Jim includes five marketing strategy areas to reconsider in order to avoid giving your prospects marketing fatigue. Your Buyers Are Experiencing Marketing Fatigue; Here's What to Do About It — 9 minutes

Casey Renner talks with Joe Sexton about preparing a startup sales organizations for going public. Great tips in here about sales enablement, using a formula-driven approach to scaling, and that everything starts and ends with the customer.Preparing Your Sales Org to Go Public — 13 minutes

Tomasz Tunguz tackles the tricky question of how to structure the compensation sales teams should get and how developing sales motions, customer success sophistication, and compensation structures to enable growth is a key area for a SaaS businesses. How Much To Compensate SaaS Sales Teams — 4 minutes

Meme of the week

On Wednesday, Beyoncé shared a photo of herself pointing at a menu, and (as expected) the internet did it's thing and quickly repurposed it into a quality meme.

David Skok identifies a third crucial startup skill: recruiting. This is the first post in an on-going series focusing on recruitment processes to find and sell passive candidates on your business. Part 1: Top of the Funnel — Sourcing — 11 minutes

Meme of the week

We all remember Lil' Bow Wow, right? The cute little 13-year old hip-hop sensation from 2000.

Well, there's now something called the Bow Wow challenge, a social media challenge that has taken over similar to the mannequin challenge of 2016.

You may ask, how did this start?

Bow Wow, like most of us, made the attempt to make his life look a little cooler than it actually was in a recent Instagram post. Too bad for Bow Wow, he was exposed on Snapchat showing that he was actually travelling coach with the rest of us common folk.

The challenge: post a picture online showing something deceptively aspirational, followed by the reality of what it actually is and include #BowWowChallenge.

For more on the story, and examples of the best #BowWowChallenge so far, go here.

Michel Feaster shares a story of how Usermind was created and how digging deep into your industry to find the most painful changes and connecting the dots is the key to creating (and owning) a new category of software.Creating a Enterprise Software Category — and Owning It — 5 minutes

Ryan Law and Emily Smith looked at the top 250 most successful SaaS companies to create The State of SaaS Content Marketing 2017. There's a number of great stats in here worth checking out. The State of SaaS Content Marketing 2017 — 12 minutes

Tracy Eiler talks with The Pedowitz Group about what it means to be a "T-shaped" marketer, where you should focus efforts in the funnel, and specific changes to make within your organization to get Sales and Marketing better aligned. CMO Insights: Tracy Eiler, Chief Marketing Officer, InsideView — 15-minute video